Academic Reading — Test 21

Reading passage

Standing on the open chalk grassland of Salisbury Plain in southern England, Stonehenge is among the most studied prehistoric monuments in the world. Although millions of visitors associate it with a single dramatic ring of upright stones, the structure visible today is in fact the final stage of a building project that unfolded over many centuries. Archaeologists generally agree that work began around 3000 BC, when a roughly circular ditch and bank were dug using tools made from antler and bone. Only later, during a series of subsequent phases, were the great stones raised. The monument was therefore not designed and completed by a single generation, but inherited, altered and extended by communities whose names and languages are now entirely lost to us. The stones themselves fall into two broad categories, and the difference between them has long fascinated researchers. The larger blocks, known as sarsens, are a hard form of sandstone and were almost certainly obtained from the Marlborough Downs, some 30 kilometres to the north. The smaller stones, confusingly called bluestones despite their varied appearance, present a far greater puzzle, because their geology points to the Preseli Hills in west Wales, roughly 250 kilometres away. How communities equipped only with simple technology moved blocks weighing several tonnes across such distances remains a matter of debate. Suggested methods include dragging the stones on wooden sledges over timber tracks, and floating them part of the way along rivers and coastal waters, though no single explanation has been proven beyond doubt. The engineering achieved with the sarsens is particularly striking. The builders shaped the uprights and the horizontal lintels that rest upon them, and they joined these pieces using techniques borrowed from woodworking rather than from any earlier tradition of stone construction. Projecting knobs carved on the tops of the uprights fitted neatly into hollows cut into the underside of each lintel, a method known as the mortise-and-tenon joint. The lintels were further locked to one another, end to end, by tongue-and-groove joins, so that the whole upper ring formed a continuous, level circle. The outer faces of the stones were also dressed to give a smooth finish, and the lintels were subtly curved to follow the line of the ring. Such care suggests that appearance, and not merely stability, mattered greatly to those who built it. What has drawn the widest popular attention, however, is the way the monument relates to the movements of the sun. The principal axis of Stonehenge is aligned so that, on the morning of the midsummer solstice, the sun rises in line with a large outlying stone now called the Heel Stone, and its light passes into the heart of the circle. The same axis, viewed in the opposite direction, frames the point on the horizon where the sun sets at the midwinter solstice. Many scholars now argue that it was this midwinter alignment, marking the shortest day and the slow return of longer ones, that held the deepest significance for the builders, rather than the midsummer event celebrated by modern crowds. The precision of the alignment indicates that the people who positioned the stones had observed the sun's yearly cycle closely and over a long period. Interpreting the wider purpose of the site is far harder than describing its alignment. Excavations have shown that the surrounding landscape was rich in activity, including a substantial settlement at nearby Durrington Walls, where large numbers of people appear to have gathered, perhaps seasonally, to feast. Many cremated human remains have also been recovered from Stonehenge itself, which has led some researchers to describe it as a place of the dead, possibly linked to ceremonies surrounding burial and remembrance. Others emphasise its likely role as a gathering place that drew people from across a wide region, helping to bind scattered communities together through shared labour and ritual. These explanations need not exclude one another, and it is quite possible that the meaning of the monument changed as the centuries passed. Modern understanding of Stonehenge rests on methods that its builders could not have imagined. Radiocarbon dating of antler tools and bone left in the ground has allowed archaeologists to construct a rough timeline of the successive building phases, while chemical analysis of the rock has tied particular stones to their distant sources. Even so, much remains uncertain, and confident claims about the beliefs of the builders should be treated with caution. The monument endures not only as an extraordinary feat of prehistoric organisation and labour, but also as a reminder of how much of the human past lies beyond the reach of certain knowledge.